generali explain yourself

Mistermeaner

Or more specifically your signature.

I've challenged this before.... but I think we're now at the half way point from when that prediction was made to when it would come true.

Even the Mayans will be right eventually so on a time bound basis what is your view on the accuracy of the prediction?

Me: I still don't see it. Energy and petrol aside we as a world still like stuff and almost all stuff contains oil and its derivatives (debatable I guess but I see shale as part of the oil industry) and see demand for stuff only ever increasing as prosperity around the world increases.

I was looking at an acquisition a few months ago for a plant that produces the propellant that goes in deodorants. Time will tell but strong growth predictions on the basis of people being more concerned with personal hygiene as they get wealthier

The propellants in question were derived from oil as are so so so many things

Ignoring transport (fuel) try to find something in your house that does not contain components derived from oil

zagubov

Mistermeaner wrote: »

Or more specifically your signature.

I've challenged this before.... but I think we're now at the half way point from when that prediction was made to when it would come true.

Even the Mayans will be right eventually so on a time bound basis what is your view on the accuracy of the prediction?

Me: I still don't see it. Energy and petrol aside we as a world still like stuff and almost all stuff contains oil and its derivatives (debatable I guess but I see shale as part of the oil industry) and see demand for stuff only ever increasing as prosperity around the world increases.

I was looking at an acquisition a few months ago for a plant that produces the propellant that goes in deodorants. Time will tell but strong growth predictions on the basis of people being more concerned with personal hygiene as they get wealthier

The propellants in question were derived from oil as are so so so many things

Ignoring transport (fuel) try to find something in your house that does not contain components derived from oil

To be fair, I think it will seem bonkers to future generations that we used to refine oil and then used it up/wrecked the planet by burning it to move cars around.

Generali

You could at least put a please in there!

The quote itself is just that, a line from someone that knows an awful lot about the oil industry. It is my belief that in places like Australia we are very nearly at the point where it's cheaper to have solar and batteries than get your electricity from a power station. From there it's a pretty small step to plugging in an extra battery pack to allow me to charge my car overnight (or simply have 2 car battery packs) rather than burning oil.

Mistermeaner

Generali wrote: »

You could at least put a please in there!

The quote itself is just that, a line from someone that knows an awful lot about the oil industry. It is my belief that in places like Australia we are very nearly at the point where it's cheaper to have solar and batteries than get your electricity from a power station. From there it's a pretty small step to plugging in an extra battery pack to allow me to charge my car overnight (or simply have 2 car battery packs) rather than burning oil.

True - but energy aside what about all the things made from stuff? Will demand for stuff that contains oil derivatives also go away?

Oh and apologies : please

kinger101

Mistermeaner wrote: »

True - but energy aside what about all the things made from stuff? Will demand for stuff that contains oil derivatives also go away?

Well, I think we'll stop burning oil long before we stop using it as a source of petrochemicals in the manufacturing industry. But eventually, petrochemicals will be replaced chemicals extracted from plants and engineered microbes.

The amount of chemicals present in agricultural waste alone is enormous, but we don't yet have the technology to break it down into simple chemical feedstocks in a cost effective manner.

Generali

Mistermeaner wrote: »

Will demand for stuff that contains oil derivatives also go away?

Probably not in the short term at least. I have to confess that I don't know enough about the petrochemical industry to be able to say.

Mistermeaner wrote: »

Oh and apologies : please

Thanks

cells

Mistermeaner wrote: »

True - but energy aside what about all the things made from stuff? Will demand for stuff that contains oil derivatives also go away?

not a lot of oil is used for that stuff

your car burns more than a ton of oil and about two tons more oil is burnt in your name for transport. Those 3 tons per year are a hell of a lot more than 30 grams of plastic in a barby or smartphone.

Also a lot of oil products can be substituted. eg plastic cups or bags for paper cups or bags.

And plastics are mostly recyclable. The mining industry is going to be screwed sometime mid century if the big economies put into place near 100% recycling of raw materials (which I think will happen)

zagubov

We've got to switch to a future where petrochemicals are used less and less. Engineering bugs to convert things for us is the way forward.

I read that before people knew all the elements a bunch of Dutch chemists bought a diamond, stuck it in a bell jar and heated it with a magnifying glass to see what exciting chemicals should be made such as diamond oxide. They were pretty horrified to find they could have produced the same carbon dioxide a lot more cheaply by breathing.

By the same token, burning slowly made hydrocarbons into exhaust gas to push multi-ton chunks of metal around is just crackers. Not quite as mad as the way we're wasting antibiotics but we're going to look at best like thoughtless idiots to future generations.

cells

zagubov wrote: »

We've got to switch to a future where petrochemicals are used less and less. Engineering bugs to convert things for us is the way forward.

I read that before people knew all the elements a bunch of Dutch chemists bought a diamond, stuck it in a bell jar and heated it with a magnifying glass to see what exciting chemicals should be made such as diamond oxide. They were pretty horrified to find they could have produced the same carbon dioxide a lot more cheaply by breathing.

By the same token, burning slowly made hydrocarbons into exhaust gas to push multi-ton chunks of metal around is just crackers. Not quite as mad as the way we're wasting antibiotics but we're going to look at best like thoughtless idiots to future generations.

I am glad for fossil fuels they put humanity into the fast track of development which had enormous benefits for humanity past present and future. Its impossible to know for sure but maybe it would have taken us hundreds of years longer to get to this point had humanity not discovered and exploited fossil fuels.

Going forward there are now viable alternatives for a lot of the primary energy needs of a developed nation and combined with efficiency the world can probably get to -90% fossil fuels by not much after mid century.

ging84

The predictions is absolutely sport on if you ask me

the whole petrol chemicals industry exists in the way it does now as an offshoot of the amount of oil products we burn as fuel.
the oil refining industry is massively geared towards maximising the % that can be used as fuel, there is plenty of scope for changes to the refinement process to produce less fuel and more other products from the same amount of oil, the same amount of other products could be produced form perhaps half the amount of oil used today, and that is without anyone looking for alternatives sources, or alternative products.

I see oil fast becoming the new coal, and gas becoming far more important, but still far less so than oil has been in the past as the world simply moves away from relying on burning things for energy.

Sanctioned_Parts_List

Oil (as in diesel and gasoline) can be made quite successfully given any reliable source of CO/CO2, steam, heat and an appropriate catalyst.

Normally the CO/CO2 is and heat are sourced by burning coal, but recent work by Audi and Sunfire has put together an air separation unit, solar farm and Fischer-Tropsch process into a pilot plant for solar-derived diesel. This is all fairly old tech combined in a new way.

If all fossil fuel consumption stopped, we wouldn't necessarily be without oil derivatives for plastics etc.. The sticking point with this is energy supply, which would need to be large, clean and cheap. Presently any energy supply can only match two of the three.